the ever curious case of quebec...

I really don't know what to make of it all. A friend forwarded to me an excerpt from the Globe and Mail coverage, where a defeated PQ candidate mused that although the Quebecois are an "open minded" people (nation?), there are limits. Electing a homosexual premier being chief among them. What's that sound? Oh yes, the daggers sliding out of their sheaths...

Of course that these same people nearly elected a party into government with virtually no experience, zero concrete policies and a rather embarrassing streak of public intolerance among their ranks was arguably a stunning display of "open mindedness" on the part of Quebecois voters. Talk about leaping before you look...

And now the pundit class is frantically casting after federal election dates, drawing upon any number of pseudo-logical arguments for/against a spring/summer/fall/winter election. But nobody can quite say how Quebec will factor into this strange mix, which is perhaps why Canadian politics has suddenly become so interesting once again.

speaking of civil liberties...

This is a long article (but worth a read) about covert NYPD infiltration of a wide range of mostly left-leaning peace-seeking groups leading up to the 2004 GOP convention in NY, with some rather nasty consequences (unjustified arrests, among other things).

I doubt the same efforts would have been made in the service of a Democratic convention, but who knows, maybe the whole notion of civil liberties is so eclipsed by the present culture of pre-emptive fear in the name of national security that any major event can now be used to justify suspending citizen rights.

It now seems that peaceful dissent risks being conflated with terrorism, as lawmakers flirt dangerously with the idea of "guilty until proven innocent," a short cut that provides them with an easy fix to potentially embarrassing opposition from the people they govern. Why answer your critics when you can simply lock them up?

"Land of the free..." Is it still possible to sing that anthem in our time and keep a straight face?

human rights aren't just for the "good guys"...

This is upsetting. I wish I understood how, nearly a decade into the 21st century, the leader of our nation doesn't grasp that human rights are not something we can choose to discriminately bestow on certain groups at the expense of others, but are in fact UNIVERSAL. This is one case where "you're either with us or against us" can never apply.

Harper's "below-the-belt" tactics in the Commons I'm used to. His staggering indifference towards universal human rights, a pillar of global political stability and the last best hope of resolving many of the festering post-invasion messes left by the Americans, I'm not willing to concede as allowable in any way shape or form.

The press will likely contain this to a 'spat' between the PM and Dion, and largely under-report on the implications this episode will have on Canada's standing as international peace keeper and above-the-board diplomatic agent. We are fast losing all credibility on the world stage: Kyoto is a joke; bilateral trade agreements with the US are a mess; our positive/neutral approach to the middle-east is over; and now we are rolling back one of our greatest achievements - the concept of universal human rights. I'm not sure it can get much worse than this.

Sadly there is almost nothing to be done: we are living through a very dark political moment, not just in Canada but across the globe.

Economists still happily predict, after well over a century of doing so, that one of these days market forces will re-balance the systemic and rampant inequality that plagues the planet. Meanwhile politicians seem to have embraced pure demagoguery. The new politics is comprised of transparently false 'spin' and fanned by the cynical manipulation of a reactionary citizenry that seems satisfied with action of ANY kind (no matter how inappropriate) at the expense of well-conceived and considered approaches to major societal and global problems.

And so it goes...

dot, dot, dot...

I've not written anything in this space for over a week with only one excuse for my absence: simple exhaustion.

To recover my energies I'm taking a break from the world of current events and burying my head in a good history book with a bit of fiction on the side. Consider me "on hiatus for retooling" until further posting...

words, words, words...

A good friend forwarded the following quotations to me today, some lucid words by Gore Vidal, a man I consider to be among the most brilliant writers of our time. These are taken from a book of his collected non-fiction titled "At Home: Essays, 1982-1988":

"I have said very little about writers because writers have figured very little in our imperial story. The founders of both republic and empire wrote well: Jefferson and Hamilton, Lincoln and Grant, T.R. and the Adamses. Today public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either."

"When Confucius was asked what would be the first thing that he would do if he were to lead the state -- his never-to-be-fulfilled dream -- he said rectify the language . This is wise. This is subtle. As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: You liberate a city by destroying it. Words are used to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. Finally, words must be so twisted as to justify an empire that has now ceased to exist, much less make sense."